For five years, Luz Maria Gordillo, an assistant professor of
women's studies at Washington State University, engaged a
transnational community that has been migrating from the small, rural
town of San Ignacio, Mexico, to Detroit, Michigan. This migration began
in the 1940s and 1950s during the Bracero Program (a guest worker
program established between the United States and Mexico) and has
continued steadily since then. In her dynamic interactions with this
community through interviews and observations, Gordillo focuses on these
migration experiences from the intersecting lens of gender, race, class,
age, sexuality, and citizenship. She also pays particular attention to
how these experiences unfolded for the women involved.

Gardillo's research led her to discover several underlying
themes within this community. San Ignacians who migrated to Detroit
often remained strongly connected to their hometown and through this
connection San Ignacio was redefined economically and culturally. At the
same time, they also invested in Detroit during its downward economic
spiral. With increased purchasing power, they bought homes and developed
businesses in what has become known as "Mexican Town." As
networks of San Ignacians grew in Detroit, women created kinship-like
communities with ties to certain public venues such as schools,
churches, and social services. Gordillo suggests that most of these
women found ways to empower themselves through various aspects of living
in the United States. For instance, several used reproductive rights
(e.g., birth control methods) that they were often dissuaded to use in
their community of origin due to religious and cultural practices.
Additionally, many women more readily embraced their sexuality by
dressing provocatively, dating more openly, and other means.

When added to the desire to be near their families and the networks
they developed, these women often had a deeper affinity toward the
Detroit community. Many San Ignacian men, however, desired to return
"home" because they valued the respect they received in this
community. Here the author examines the patriarchal challenges that
women faced including the relative difficulty of receiving citizenship
and the lack of participation allowed in the political process in their
community of origin. Gordillo suggests that these challenges might also
have influenced their desire to remain in Detroit even though they still
strongly identify as San Ignacians.

Gordillo places this community in the context of its history by
describing the historical cultural, religious, and political events of
San Ignacio. She dedicates one chapter to La Fiesta de los Ausentes, an
annual cultural and religious celebration that welcomes the town's
absent residents visiting from Detroit. Upon sharing her observations of
this celebration, Gordillo provides both historical data and
immigrant-related policies along with the stories of how Detroit became
a target destination for many San Ignacians. She then describes the
exponential growth of this community in Detroit as women and children
joined men who had migrated there. Gordillo shares these women's
migration experiences from crossing the border to building a home in
this new, urban city highlighting the significant role they often play
in caring for incoming families from San Ignacio. Without glamorizing
these experiences, the author provides a critical analysis of both the
challenges and burdens of this caring role as well as the rewards these
women felt from building a home and community for their families and
friends.

Gordillo builds on the foundational work of Gloria Anzadulua, one
of the first scholars to theorize about the borderlands between Mexico
and the United States through a feminist lens by providing research that
supports these theories. Gordillo's work also adds to the dialogue
and research of scholars such as Denise Segura (sociology and Latin
American studies) and Patricia Zavella (anthropology and Latin American
Studies), introducing new concepts such as "transnational
sexualities" and emphasizing a transnationalism that challenges the
idea of two separate communities. She acknowledges the significance of
both the receiving community and the community of origin in the lives of
these immigrants. Additionally, unlike many feminist scholars, Gordillo
observed and interviewed men while keeping much of the focus on the
women in her research. She used these male perspectives to better
examine how migration is a gendered experience.

Yet, in her use of feminist theory to guide her focus on power
relations, Gordillo does not seem to position herself within this book.
Many feminist researchers embrace the assumption that knowledge is
socially located, critiquing research that does not acknowledge this
social location as an attempt to be objective which is never truly
achieved. Although Gordillo uses language that situates her participants
as friends, she does little to identify herself, thus leaving readers to
wonder where this researcher stands in relation to the subjects she is
studying. Questions such as, "is this author speaking from an
immigrant, heterosexual, or working-class lens" are left
unanswered. It is within her social location that Gordillo interprets
her findings, thereby making it essential for her to share this location
with her readers as they come to understand the experiences of this
community from her perspective.

Despite this shortcoming, Gordillo presents an important story of
how communities develop and redefine themselves through the process of
migration. While many scholars would attempt to identify broad shared
experiences within immigrant communities, Gordillo uses her knowledge of
power relations to analyze how various identities influence individual
and group experiences differently. Overall, her approach of integrating
historical facts, observations, and stories collected in her research
allows readers to gain an understanding of migration that disputes the
common belief that migration experiences are all similar. Instead, she
presents these stories through an intersecting lens of identity that
makes a significant contribution to existing research on immigration.